Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Like father, like son? A comparison of absolute and relative intergenerational labour income mobility in Germany and the US

Are children better off than their parents? This highly debated question in politics and economics is investigated by analysing the trends in absolute and relative intergenerational labour income mobility for Germany and the US. High quality panel data is used for this purpose; the SOEP for Germany and the PSID for the US. In Germany, 67% of sons born between 1955 and 1975 earned a significantly higher ...

The returns to occupational foreign language use: Evidence from Germany

This paper analyzes the wage premia associated with workers' occupational use of foreign languages in Germany. After eliminating time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity and other confounding factors, sizable returns of about 0.12 log points to applying fluent English skills are found in the general population, while the point estimate for immigrants is 0.26 log points. Returns to occupational ...

Conflicting Identities: Cosmopolitan or Anxious? Appreciating Concerns of Host Country Population Improves Attitudes Towards Immigrants

This paper connects insights from the literature on cosmopolitan values in political science, anxiety in social psychology, and identity economics in a vignette-style experiment. We asked German respondents about their attitudes towards a Syrian refugee, randomizing components of his description (N=662). The main treatment describes the refugee as being aware of and empathetic towards potential Germans' ...

Individual Determinants of Work Attendance: Evidence on the Role of Personality

We investigate the influence of personality as measured by the Big Five personality scale on absenteeism using representative data for Germany. In particular, the 2005 wave of the German Socio-Economic Panel provides detailed information on socio-economic background characteristics along with a Big Five personality scale. Estimates of a Logit model and of count data regression are used to analyze an ...

The Effect of Occupational Segregation by Gender on Wages: A Comparison of the United States and Germany

Volunteering and Social Inclusion. Interrelations Between Unemployment and Civic Engagement in Germany and Great Britain (Dissertation)

The Political Effects of Immigrant Naturalization

Immigration is transforming the societies of Europe and North America. Yet the political implications of these changes remain unclear. In particular, we lack credible evidence on whether, and how, becoming a citizen of the country of residence prompts immigrants to engage with the political system. This paper used panel data from Germany to test theories of citizenship and immigrant politics. I found ...

Poverty measurement with the European Community Household Panel

Poverty among the elderly in the European Union: The effect of poverty measurement

The Dynamics of Labour Market Participation, Unemployment and Non Participation in Great Britain, Germany and Sweden: Similarities, Differences and Changes over Time